Prosell has spent over 28 years putting in place sales performance improvement strategies for clients across the globe.

In this time we have been exposed to a number of training in sales initiatives that have had no impact on sales behaviour or the bottom line.  So why does much sales training have no impact?  There are 5 key reasons.

• Not customised – it is a huge error to think that one size fits all.  Don’t buy pre-prepared course material, sales systems or account management processes.  How can these possibly be right for you, when they are not correctly put together for your sales people and your customers?  Also, generic courses assume their content is what your people need to improve on.  Why train people on questioning techniques when their issue is lead generation and appointments?
• No management involvement – line managers must attend training to know what their people are being asked to do.  If they don’t they will not be able to help their people and the worst even dismiss the value of the training because they are threatened by it.  Senior management need to know what standards their sales force are working to and must reinforce it.
• No measurement – if there is no system in place to measure change in practice and improvement in skills, then the sales people revert back to old practices very quickly.  Most organisations don’t really understand how to measure sales effectiveness and how good (or bad) their sales people are.
• Bad training – sales training (like all good training), should allow people to prove to themselves that they can now do something better than before.  Much training in sales is slides and story telling – ego driven trainer behaviours rather than allowing people to practice and improve.
• Just too much – may sales training programs have too much content and not enough practice.  This is made worse by generic content, where things that may actually be useful are lost in the myriad of slides, models and tips.  Good training in sales focuses on improving a few things only and is structured accordingly.  I challenge anyone to remember more than 20% of what is covered in a 3 day course, let alone try and implement it.

• Prosell offers a program that combines sales training and sales coaching.  It is based on recognised research, which tells us that training alone has limited impact and that when supported by skilful coaching, has 74% more chance of being implemented.
• Prosell has resources to deliver these programs across Australia, covering Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Canberra.